How do we know IPE interventions are effective and participants are gaining proficiency in IPEC Competencies? Multi-institutional studies are necessary to build the evidence base for interprofessional education and collaborative practice (IPE/CP). They enable the practice community to understand the impact of IPE/CP on Quadruple Aim outcomes and study the efficacy of interventions across diverse clinical, educational, and geographical settings, and cultural groups.

Although the necessity for using common validated measures of interprofessional collaboration in multi-institutional research is widely acknowledged in IPE/CP literature, one aspect of validity that is often overlooked is “measurement equivalence.” An assessment has measurement equivalence if its subscales and interpretation of questions are consistent across groups. Understanding if our assessments demonstrate measurement equivalence across diverse interprofessional teams, patients, and caregivers in a variety of settings is crucial for valid cross-group comparisons, to minimize bias in research findings, and advance IPE/CP measurement.

Aligned with the summit theme “Navigating Complexity to Advance Outcomes,” this seminar will empower learners to navigate complexity of quantitative assessment in large-scale multi-institutional IPE/CP research. The seminar will begin with a non-technical description of measurement equivalence and its role in reducing bias in IPE/CP research. The process for interprofessional multi-institutional collaborations that test for measurement equivalence will be outlined, with step-by-step examples from the presenters’ own interprofessional multi-institutional collaboration of the cross-institutional measurement equivalence of the Jefferson Teamwork Observation Guide®, a 360-degree assessment linked to the IPEC competencies for measuring interprofessional collaboration in educational and clinical settings. The collaboration used data from 5,130 pre-licensure students from 17 professions who participated in IPE from 2021-2023 at two academic health centers.

The steps of this process include:

Step 1: Networking and Exploring

• Building an interprofessional multi-institutional team, including someone with measurement science expertise.
• Reflecting on cross-institutional similarity and diversity

Step 2: Building the Research Foundation

• Aligning assessment tools and strategies
• Considering key questions for interprofessional multi-institutional research collaborations

Step 3: Data Analysis (High-Level Overview)

• Preparing interprofessional multi-institutional data for analysis
• Checking statistical assumptions for measurement equivalence
• Testing for measurement equivalence across groups informed by prior theory or research.

Step 4: Evaluation and Next Steps

• Moving forward if measurement equivalence is not achieved.
• Setting benchmarks to determine successful collaboration and/or effective IPE interventions or competency proficiency

Learning Objectives:
After attending this session, learners will be able to:

1. Describe what it means for an assessment to demonstrate “measurement equivalence” across diverse groups or settings.
2. Explain the importance of measurement equivalence for reducing bias in large-scale, multi-institutional IPE/CP research with diverse groups.
3. Describe strategies for building a multi-institutional research collaboration, including ways to involve team members with complimentary expertise like measurement scientists.
4. Develop a plan to initiate or expand multi-institutional partnerships to test measurement equivalence of one’s own assessments.